December 22, 1932, Page 1

Students Attend Anti-War Congress

          More than three hundred sympathizers attended the Symposium held last Saturday to raise funds for the delegates to the Chicago Student Anti-War Congress. The speakers, Dr. Harry Slochower, Dr. Corliss Lamont. and Mr. Quincey Howe, each treated some important element of the causes and dangers of war. All the speakers found the salient fault to lie in the economic and social structure of imperialist countries, not in the ghost of "Human Nature." All three speakers urged the necessity of some effective economic reorganization, condemning such futile attempts as those of the League of Nations.

          "Human Nature is potentially everything," declared Dr. Harry Slochower in his address on Human Nature and War. What produces war is not the innate pugnacity of the human being, but the specific situation. The molding elements in the environment, then, [sic] is at fault when war arises, and the solution is a change in the specific environment. Dr. Slochower outlined the progress of the belief in the essential egoism and pugnacity of human nature, its origin as far back as Heraclitus' theory of "strife" and the doctrine of original sin, to the present notions of the importance of the egoist element in human nature.

          Following the address of Quincey Howe, editor of the Living Age, in which the speaker effectively summarized the principal elements of the War Danger Today, stressing the danger spots in the East and in South America, Dr. Corliss Lamont, instructor at Columbia University, spoke on the Economic Roots of War. War is rooted in the economic need. The expanding needs, production, and population of a growing nation create imperialist war. All colonization is the result of a search for new markets, new sources of raw material, and for colonization. All other causes are secondary.

          All three speakers urged the students to present a united front to the imminent danger of war, to demand the recognition of Russia by the United States, and to do their part in the organization of the growing student movement in the United States.

Return to Spotlight Page || Home Page

May 20, 2004